Afterland: Poems
By Mai Der Vang
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
The 2016 winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, selected by Carolyn Forché
When I make the crossing, you must not be taken no matter what
the current gives. When we reach the camp,
there will be thousands like us.
If I make it onto the plane, you must follow me to the roads
and waiting pastures of America.
We will not ride the water today on the shoulders of buffalo
as we used to many years ago, nor will we forage
for the sweetest mangoes.
I am refugee. You are too. Cry, but do not weep.
—from “Transmigration”
Afterland is a powerful, essential collection of poetry that recounts with devastating detail the Hmong exodus from Laos and the fate of thousands of refugees seeking asylum. Mai Der Vang is telling the story of her own family, and by doing so, she also provides an essential history of the Hmong culture’s ongoing resilience in exile. Many of these poems are written in the voices of those fleeing unbearable violence after U.S. forces recruited Hmong fighters in Laos in the Secret War against communism, only to abandon them after that war went awry. That history is little known or understood, but the three hundred thousand Hmong now living in the United States are living proof of its aftermath. With poems of extraordinary force and grace, Afterland holds an original place in American poetry and lands with a sense of humanity saved, of outrage, of a deep tradition broken by war and ocean but still intact, remembered, and lived.
Related to Afterland
Related ebooks
Wideawake Field: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nightingale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Waterbaby Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Rest of Love: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Speak Low: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Split Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5House of Lords and Commons: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Galleons: Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Four Reincarnations: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Silverchest: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sight Lines Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Moy Sand and Gravel: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Painted Bed: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Swallowed Light Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5like a solid to a shadow Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Field Music: Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ordinary Beast Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Logan Notebooks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Emporium Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Some Say the Lark Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Neck of the Woods Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lima :: Limón Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Elements of San Joaquin: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pale Colors in a Tall Field: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Arrow Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Cenzontle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cold Pastoral: Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The City She Was Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spectra Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Poetry For You
The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Waste Land and Other Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dream Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pillow Thoughts II: Healing the Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters to a Young Poet (Rediscovered Books): With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Afterland
2 ratings0 reviews